According to the New York-based rights group, 420,000 people in North Sinai Province are in urgent need of food, medicine and other essential items.

“Severe restrictions on the movement of people and goods in almost all of North Sinai threatened to trigger a humanitarian crisis in the region,” it warned.

Security forces “cut water and electricity almost entirely in the most eastern areas of North Sinai, including Rafah and Sheikh Zuwayed,” HRW reported.

HRW’s Middle East and North Africa director, Sarah Leah Whitson, said, “A counterterrorism operation that imperils the flow of essential goods to hundreds of thousands of civilians is unlawful and unlikely to stem violence.”